Development of FriendLink Similarity Metric for Link Prediction in Weighted Multiplex Networks

Link prediction methods can help to reconstruct systems from incomplete datasets, to understand the structure dynamic complex networks, and to predict future interactions in evolving networks. Link prediction in multiplex networks is the problem of finding missing links between users based on information from other layers. Although the link prediction problem has been widely studied in multiplex networks, most methods do not consider both interlayer and intralayer features at the same time. Similarity metrics are one of the most common approaches to solving the link prediction problem. However, the development of similarity metrics over multiple layers with the definition of multiplex networks has become an important challenge that has caught the attention of many researchers. In this article, a novel similarity metric is introduced by considering reliable paths between users for link prediction in multiplex networks. The proposed method maps the network to a weighted network by extracting different interlayer and intralayer features from multiplex networks. Finally, the proposed similarity metric develops the FriendLink metric by considering the weight of links and reliable paths. The proposed method is evaluated in comparison with classical similarity metrics and equivalence algorithms such as SEM-Path, LPIS, and SOIDP. Two real datasets based on multiplex networks including Twitter-Foursquare and Twitter-Instagram have been used to evaluate. Experiments prove the superiority of link prediction in the proposed method over other algorithms.